Original title
Face to Face
Released
2/4/1959
Origin country
GB
Production companies
BBC
Status
Ended
Number of seasons
4
Number of episodes
69
Face To Face is a BBC television series originally broadcast between 1959 and 1962, created and produced by Hugh Burnett, which ran for 35 episodes. The insightful and often probing style of the interviewer, former politician John Freeman, separated it from other programmes of the time. The series was revived in 1989 with Jeremy Isaacs as the interviewer. This version ran until 1998.
Philosopher Bertrand Russell is the second guest on the series, beginning the interview by reading from a fictitious obituary he'd written for himself. Among the topics discussed are guilt, sex, money, childhood, prison and loss of faith.
John Freeman interviews the first of just two female guests in the series - poet Dame Edith Sitwell. The Dame discusses her unhappy childhood, her working relationship with Dylan Thomas, and her unexpected diversion into Hollywood.
Adlai Stevenson relives his early life in journalism and law, and discusses losing two Presidential elections to Dwight Eisenhower. Among his other reflections are how others see him, and how he sees himself.
A cigar-puffing John Huston discusses his directing career, his desire to make films under the United Nations, his relationship with his father and fighting with Errol Flynn.
John Freeman interviews Carl Jung at his Zürich home, asking the psychologist questions about consciousness, his friendship with Freud, his thoughts on death, and his own self-analysis.
Tony Hancock engages in self reflection, looking back at his childhood, his need to work, his health issues, and whether he could ever truly be happy.
Racing driver Stirling Moss is called upon to ponder his career. Customary for the series, the questions go deeper than usual interviews: Does he think about mortality? Does he feel close to God? What about the breakdown of his marriage?
Evelyn Waugh takes part in the series due to what he claims is "poverty", and that "everyone thinks ill of the BBC". Among the topics under discussion are religion, truth in fiction, and Waugh's own periods of mental illness.
Arguably the most famous episode of the series, as Gilbert Harding verges on breaking down under John Freeman's questioning. "I shall be very glad to be dead" remains a poignant response - Harding died less than two months after broadcast.
Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin discusses his role in the second World War, including whether he was ever accused of war crimes, and whether he was given any orders he felt were unacceptable.
John Freeman talks to a former director-general of his own employer, as ex-BBC head Lord John Reith discusses his early life and time with the corporation. Debated among the two is the value of the BBC in Reith's time, and in the present.
John Freeman and Simone Signoret play a verbal game of cat and mouse, as he wants to know "the woman behind the actor's mask." However, Simone is deliberate in what she reveals, answering one question with "I think that's my own business."
45-year-old John Freeman admits that he's been "consulting some teenage friends of mine" as he interviews his first pop star, Adam Faith. Faith talks about the difference between his showbusiness persona and his real self, Terry Nelhams.
"It is never easy for one to accept the role of symbolism without going through constant moments of self examination." Martin Luther King discusses his childhood in a segregated America, and the challenges he still faces in the present.
Jomo Kenyatta discusses his release from prison, and whether there was more he could have done to prevent his incarceration. Also discussed is Kenyatta's vision for the future of Kenya.
In the final edition of the programme, footballer Danny Blanchflower faces what he calls the "challenge" of appearing, and describes why he fled from the studio when he was the planned subject of "This Is Your Life".
In the first of an occasional series of revivals of the classic television interview, Anthony Burgess talks to Jeremy Isaacs. Stirred into writing by the prospect of fatal illness, Anthony Burgess is now regarded as one of the world's most celebrated writers. His novels include A Clockwork Orange, Earthly Powers and his latest, Any Old Iron. The first volume of his autobiography Little Wilson and Big God has been widely recognised as a contemporary masterpiece. Long resident outside Britain, Burgess talks about his life and art - and his attitude to the country of his birth.
At the age of 70, Cunningham is perhaps the world's best-known choreographer of modern dance. Since 1953, when he founded his own company, he has been at the forefront of modern experimentation. Cunningham talks about the motivation behind his unflagging creative energy, and his collaborations with artists such as John Cage , Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.
In the revival of a classic television interview format, Jeremy Isaacs talks to playwright and film director David Hare. From Knuckle to Licking Hitler and Plenty, Hare's work has explored the morality of public and private life in post-war Britain. His current National Theatre play A Secret Rapture and two new films soon to be released, Paris By Night and Strapless, extend these themes of public and personal morality into the Thatcher era.
In a revival of the classic television format, Jeremy Isaacs interviews George Steiner, one of Europe's most eloquent intellectuals.
The author of Empire of the Sun and Crash discusses the realities he has created through his work and their interaction with the events of his own life. Ballard talks honestly about the attraction of dark and violent things and the light that these extreme moments can shed on the truth of the human condition. He also explores his early desire to be a psychiatrist and the way in which his interest in the workings of the mind has carried through into the fiction he produces.
Jeremy Isaacs talks to American neurologist Oliver Sacks, author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. In this interview he describes how he has turned the case history into literature.
Jeremy Isaacs comes face to face with Roger Corman , maker of over 200 'B' movies with titles like Gods of Shark Reef and The Man with the X-ray Eyes. Current Hollywood talents such as Scorsese, Coppola, De Niro and Nicholson all made their debuts with Corman, and his instinct for the tacky and absurd in American life has earned him cult status among critics.
Jeremy Isaacs comes Face to Face with one of the world's most influential and controversial psychologists, Professor Hans Eysenck.
David Attenborough, television presenter and pioneer of natural history programmes, is Face to Face with Jeremy Isaacs.
American choreographer Merce Cunningham is Face to Face with Jeremy Isaacs.
American gay writer Edmund White is Face to Face with Jeremy Isaacs.
Writer and intellectual George Steiner is Face to Face with Jeremy Isaacs.
Jeremy Isaacs talks to one of the great figures of contemporary British theatre.
Novelist Martin Amis, author of Money and London Fields, comes face to face with Jeremy Isaacs.
Painter David Hockney talks to Jeremy Isaacs.
Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas, star of Spartacus and Lust for Life, comes face to face with Jeremy Isaacs.
One of the most successful film directors of all time, Steven Spielberg, talks about his career with Jeremy Isaacs.
For decades Billy Connolly has been one of Britain's most popular comedians. Tonight he talks to Jeremy Isaacs about stand-up comedy, bodily functions and the night someone set fire to his hair.
A rare television interview with one of Britain's greatest writers, V.S. Naipaul. Best known for his novels A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River (winner of the Booker Prize), and The Enigma of Arrival, he talks with Jeremy Isaacs about his life and work.
he black American writer Maya Angelou won international acclaim with the publication of the first volume of her autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", an eloquent memoir of a tragic childhood in the deep south. Raped by her mother's boy-friend at 8, she became mute for five years. Despite these harrowing accounts, her writing is full of hope, providing inspiration for a whole generation. Jeremy Isaacs asks Maya Angelou about her life, writing, and her hopes for the future.
Jeremy Isaacs talks to award-winning writer Jeanette Winterson, who discusses her love of writing and reflects on the ways in which her upbringing and sexuality have influenced her work. Winterson also explains her desire to avoid being categorised, either in terms of her work or her life, and the ways in which her non-conformist style of writing and 'taboo' subject matter reflect this and have, perhaps, contributed to her success.
Jeremy Isaacs comes Face to Face with Ken Loach, one of Britain's best known and most provocative film-makers, who talks about his new film Ladybird Ladybird.
Novelist Salman Rushdie talks to Jeremy Isaacs.
In his occasional interview series for The Late Show, Jeremy Isaacs meets US beat generation poet Allen Ginsberg , who describes his working and personal relationships with literary figures such as William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac , and the effect drug-taking has had on his work.
Jeremy Isaacs interviews American playwright Arthur Miller, as his latest play Broken Glass transfers to London's West End and A View from the Bridge begins a national tour.
Knotty Ash 's most famous son, comedian Ken Dodd , talks to Jeremy Isaacs about his career and his analytical approach to comedy. See today's choices.
First transmitted in 1995, Jeremy Isaacs delves into the life of Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall, who became a movie star instantly following her first screen appearances in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep. Born as Betty Perske, she went on to marry Humphrey Bogart and enjoyed a 50-year career under her new name, Lauren Bacall. They discuss her film career, autobiographies and her impending return to the British stage.
In tonight's first in a new series of in-depth interviews, Jeremy Isaacs comes face to face with Oscar-winning actor Anthony Hopkins.
John Berger, author of A Seventh Man and Ways of Seeing, faces questions from Jeremy Isaacs about his life and career. He talks about his 'European voice' and his appeal across a continent that he considers to be 'in flux'. He speaks affectionately about his mother, a former suffragette who had always wanted her child to be a writer, and his father, 'a man so marked by that terrible First World War'.
Jeremy Isaacs talks to composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim about his work - which includes West Side Story, Follies and Sweeney Todd - his views and his life.
Jeremy Isaacs talks to Martha Gellhorn, journalist, novelist and one of the great war correspondents of the century.
Jeremy Isaacs talks to Norman Mailer, one of America's leading novel and non-fiction writers, whose personal life, as well as his work, has often kept him in the public eye.
Jeremy Isaacs talks to actor Paul Eddington about his eminent career in both television and the theatre, and his battle against skin cancer.
Jeremy Isaacs talks to feminist writer Germaine Greer. Last in the series.
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